Metaphysical poetry.

• WHAT IS METAPHYSICAL POETRY ?

Metaphysical poetry.

intellectual complexity and concentration that is displayed in the poetry of John Donne, the chief of the Metaphysicals. Others include Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, John Cleveland, and Abraham Cowley as well as, to a lesser extent, George Herbert and Richard Crashaw.

Portrait of John Donne

Portrait of John Donne

John Donne, detail of an oil painting by an unknown artist, after Isaac Oliver, c. 1616; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

Their work is a blend of emotion and intellectual ingenuity, characterized by conceit or “wit”—that is, by the sometimes violent yoking together of apparently unconnected ideas and things so that the reader is startled out of his complacency and forced to think through the argument of the poem. Metaphysical poetry is less concerned with expressing feeling than with analyzing it, with the poet exploring the recesses of his consciousness. The boldness of the literary devices used—especially obliquity, irony, and paradox—are often reinforced by a dramatic directness of language and by rhythms derived from that of living speech.

Esteem for Metaphysical poetry never stood higher than in the 1930s and ’40s, largely because of T.S. Eliot’s influential essay “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921), a review of Herbert J.C. Grierson’s anthology Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the Seventeenth Century. In this essay Eliot argued that the works of these men embody a fusion of thought and feeling that later poets were unable to achieve because of a “dissociation of sensibility,” which resulted in works that were either intellectual or emotional but not both at once. In their own time, however, the epithet “metaphysical” was used pejoratively: in 1630 the Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden objected to those of his contemporaries who attempted to “abstract poetry to metaphysical ideas and scholastic quiddities.” At the end of the century, John Dryden censured Donne for affecting “the metaphysics” and for perplexing “the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts . . . with the softnesses of love.” Samuel Johnson, in referring to the learning that their poetry displays, also dubbed them “the metaphysical poets,” and the term has continued in use ever since. Eliot’s adoption of the label as a term of praise is arguably a better guide to his personal aspirations about his own poetry than to the Metaphysical poets themselves; his use of metaphysical underestimates these poets’ debt to lyrical and socially engaged verse. Nonetheless, the term is useful for identifying the often-intellectual character of their writing.

• Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, but the intelligence, learning and seriousness of the poets means that the poetry is about the profound areas of experience especially about love, romantic and sensual; about man's relationship with God - the eternal perspective; and, to a less extent, about pleasure, learning and art.

• Characteristics of 'Metaphysical Poetry'



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• METAPHYSICAL POETS
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• JOHN DONNE'S POEMS
• The Sun rising
• The flea
• death,be not proud
• Sweetest love
• The dream
• The Ecstacy

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• "The Flea"

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• "The Flea" written by John donne.The poet uses biological image of the flea in order to deal with the theme of 'love'.The speaker uses the occasion of a flea hopping from himself to young lady as an excuse to argue that the two of them should make a love.In the flea their blood is mixed togather,he says that they have already made as one in the body of the flea.the flea pricked her and get what it wanted without having to woo her.The flea's bite and mingling of their bloods is not considered a sin,so why should their love-making?.
• In the second stanza the speaker attempt to prevent the woman from killing the flea.He argues that since the flea contains the 'life' of both her self and the speaker,she would be guilty of suicide and triple homicide in kiling it.The woman in question is obviously not convinced,for in the third stanza she has killed the flea with a fingernail.The speaker then turn this around to point out that,although the flea which contained portions of their lives is dead,neither of them is the weaker for it.If this commingling of bodily fluids can leave no lasting effect,then why does she hesitate to join with him in sexual intimacy?after all,her honor will be equally undiminished.